Turning inward

Dear Friends,

A reminder: next Monday October 13th at 7.30pm at ECI we will be holding our contemplative worship service. There will be no session on Monday October 20th. I will be away.

If we simply ground ourselves in experience we can we can go astray; if we simply ground ourselves in Scripture without experience it becomes stale and riddled with superego; by bringing scripture and presence into the tradition of centuries of prayer we open to the living moment grounded in the depth of a kind of ancientness and newness all in the now.

Last time we focused on holding; holding in the body.

Tonight we are going to explore the turning inward. But more than that is beginning to learn the language of knowing from the inner vs the knowing from the outer. Or the different wisdom that arises in the esoteric vs the exoteric. The exoteric is the surface, the way of knowing, the way the ego knows, the s/ego interprets, the dualistic mind, the linear rational mind, the right and wrong. The knowing that comes from conceptualizing, dividing….

The inner way of knowing the esoteric way of knowing requires eyes that can see and ears that can hear. This is a new operating system. We all know it. It is the flash of inspiration, the sudden synthesis, the dots lining up; the silence revealing something deeper; it is a way of knowing without the usual thinking mind.

I am suggesting that the Beatitudes can be read from the exoteric, egoic, by the superego, familiar way of knowing, or from the way of wisdom, the way of knowing that comes through silence, oneness, through mystery; wisdom comes out of a non dual way of being.

Over the next months we are going to learn and experience this way of knowing. how we know through superego vs living presence; how we know literally vs through living presence; how we know rationally vs knowing through living presence….

We start with the entry into practice:  turning inward.

Matthew 6:6: 

Enter into a private place to pray, shut the door, and then commune there with your Father privately, and your Father, the Hidden One, who observes you secretly will reward you.

Journal: what are your literal interpretations? What were you taught? How does the superego hear this? 

What if the private place to pray is your own body, your private temple, your inner experiencing. What if your embodied opening into the now is prayer, the deepest form of prayer, the prayer of silent, wordless prayer?

Tells me a way you resist shutting the door.

Tell me what draws you into a private place to pray.

Explore what it means to you to commune with the Hidden One. What does communion feel like?

Remember that the superego will thwart you as you go deeper, as you claim your experience, as you take your unique journey. Don't let it stop you. 

In peace, Alison